Crime

Murder by Text

Kim Proctor was no different than your ordinary teenage girl. Easily hurt by insults and just as easily swayed by compliments, she dwelled in an angsty purgatory familiar to most adolescents. But when Kim went from average kid to missing girl, her storyline took a tragic turn. David Kushner reports on the teenage nightmare that British Columbia police uncovered when they peeked behind the digital curtains of Kim’s supposed friends, Kruse Wellwood and Cameron Moffat.

One night around dinnertime, Kruse Wellwood sent an instant message to Kim Proctor. “Hey, I thought you had babysitting,” he wrote. “Did you finish early?”

Gawky and boyish, 16-year-old Kruse had scraggly brown hair and uneven eyes. He lived in a bungalow with his mother on Happy Valley Road, a leafy street in the small town of Langford, British Columbia. On this evening, as on so many others, he was hanging out with his best friend, Cameron Moffat, a burly 17-year-old goth. But, like many kids his age, Kruse spent as much of his time with friends online as he did in person. When he wasn’t texting, he was playing World of Warcraft, the online role-playing game, or chatting over the Microsoft network with friends.

When Kruse IM’d Kim to see if she was done babysitting, no response came. But he didn’t expect one. The instant message was a cover. Kruse knew Kim had never made it to her job. She was right there in his house with him and Cam. Bound. Beaten. Raped. And, by the next morning, stuffed in his freezer. Dead.

Everyone knows teens live with abandon online—exposing their secrets, likes, dislikes, sexual preferences, home addresses, phone numbers, and so on—in ways their parents can’t understand. But it’s not just this generation’s sense of privacy that’s eroding. It’s their sense of permanence. They act as though the words they write and pictures they post and texts they send vanish into the ether. But in fact they’re leaving a running transcript behind, a digital trail of their hopes, their anxieties, and, in the case of at least one small Canadian town, even their crimes.

Kimberly Proctor was born on January 1, 1992. Her middle-class parents—Lucy, a Walmart manager, and Fred—a diesel mechanic, called her “Baby New Year” or Kimmy. Kim had a passion for animals, raising a menagerie of lizards, rabbits, mice, and hamsters. She loved cats so much that, when she was young, she wore cat ears to school.

But Kim’s earnestness made her vulnerable. Kids teased her about her cat ears, meowing at her in class, and never let up as the years went on. “She was bullied throughout her life,” her mother recalls. Kim’s attention-deficit disorder didn’t help. She would panic navigating the swarm of students in the hallways at school. Her parents tried to medicate her, but this only “zombied her out,” her mother said. Eventually, they transferred her to an alternative school, Pacific Secondary, to get more individualized attention.

The school attracted a variety of troubled kids in Langford, a sleepy suburb of Victoria, but few more troubled than Kruse Wellwood. Kruse was a killer’s son. In 2001, following his involvement in a sexual-assault case, Kruse’s father, Robert Raymond Dezwaan, sexually assaulted and murdered a 16-year-old girl. Dezwaan was sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for 15 years. Kruse later said he clearly understood what his father had done, but he seldom discussed it. Kruse had been involved in a variety of incidents—from smoking pot to stealing money from mailboxes—by the time he was 16.

Kruse and Cam met in fifth-grade art class when they bonded over their mutual disdain of a teacher. While Kruse was wiry and intelligent, Cam was a hulking slow learner who suffered from A.D.H.D. A psychiatric report later revealed that Cam had been sexually abused at age four (although it was not publicly revealed by whom). As a child, Cam began jumping out his bedroom window at night until it was barred. Cam resisted counseling and meds. He began lashing out at home and cutting himself to relieve stress. He was increasingly menacing at school too, bringing a knife to class.

Kruse was the one kid who seemed to understand him. “[He] might as well be my brother,” Cam later said. They skipped school, smoked pot, played World of Warcraft, and surfed porn sites, but, despite frequent acting out, were never perceived as a serious threat. In February 2009, Kruse posted an entry on a WordPress blog entitled, “Early Warning Signs of a Serial Killer.” He listed common traits including animal abuse, fascination with fire, abandonment by a father, and an intense interest in sadomasochistic porn. “The peculier thing is I meet all fourteen criteria” of a serial killer, he blogged. “Apparently though meeting all criteria makes it unlikely for the subject to be a serial killer. I suppose only time will tell.”

By 2009, Kim, Kruse, and Cam had become part of the same small group at Pacific Secondary. The teens in Langford enjoyed a great degree of independence, cruising the double-decker buses, heading to the Westshore Town Centre mall, or getting stoned on the rambling Galloping Goose Trail. At night they continued the party into the wee hours online, chatting and flirting.

For a while, Kim dated Zach, another member of the group, who was particularly friendly with Kruse. But, like many high-school romances, Kim’s affair with Zach was short-lived—he called it off after a few months. Kim was crushed and sought out the solace of her friends, including Cam and Kruse, online. During one of these chats, Cam confessed to Kim that he liked her. He complimented her beauty, telling her: “There arnt meny beautiful things iv seen, but i must say you are one of them.”

“Aww thanx :),” she replied.

But Kim was more interested in Kruse. The two had become close during her painful split from Zach, texting and chatting. Since Kruse was still close with Zach, Kim told her friend Samantha Kennedy that dating him seemed like a way to lessen the pain of losing Zach. “Make sure if you don’t like him that you don’t lead him on,” Samantha advised.

During one chat, Kruse told Kim he felt more open around her than other people. “I can’t lie to you,” he wrote. “It makes me feel too guilty. Normally I can. . . . You make me feel very . . . honest for some reason.” Kim replied with a laugh and a confused emoticon. “Ha ha . . ,” she wrote, “thanx i guess: S.”

Online, they began sharing the insecurities that they couldn’t in person. Kim told Kruse she still felt short and pudgy. “You’re beautiful the way you are,” he reassured her. When Kim tried to joke about Kruse’s old school-yard nickname, the Spaz, he said the wounds ran deeper than she thought. “It wasn’t a nickname it was an insult,” he explained. “I had huge people issues. I still do but now I know how people work and [what] makes them tick so It’s easy enough to put on a mask and play pretend.” When Kruse wrote of being “violent and explosive,” she replied with an “lol.”

“You’re too good Kim,” he wrote to her one day, “you trust in people too much.”

Offline, Kruse’s and Cam’s lives were growing increasingly dark. They were often high. They experimented with drinking blood and bodily fluids. Friends reported hearing Cam screaming at his family at home, and Kruse, still living alone with his mother, was resistant to any supervision at all.

They visited sadistic porn sites, and in their frequent chats with each other online, they began fantasizing about rape and bondage.

One day, Kim was chatting separately with them at the same time, switching from one window of conversation to the next. Cam invited her to a party “in my pants” and promised a cream-filled lollipop.

“OMG,” she wrote Kruse, “he says he has a Lolipop that will last all night long i didn’t no they made those!”

“I happen to own that brand of lollipop as well,” Kruse wrote back.

“Ok . . ,” she replied, with her signature emoticon, cat whiskers, “there is no such Lolipop with a cream in the middle>Cam: YOU HAVE DEATH URIN ON YOU!!!!

Cam: your going to die next. . . .

Kim: . . .

Kim: >Kim: Oh ... wut do u want ?

Kruse: What are you doing tomorrow?

Kim: nothing other than baby sitting at 3:00

Kruse: I’m bored and was looking for someone to chill with today. I also wanted to apologize.

Kim: oh ?

Kruse: I have some things I’d rather tell you in person about the entire Zach fiasco.

Kim: this is sudden an i can’t help but wounder why

Kim: i don’t wanna talk about Zach . . . )(

Kruse: Zach and I aren’t as close as we used to be, but I feel you deserve an explanation

Kruse: But like I said, I’d rather talk in person. I can meet you tomorrow earlier than her babysitting and talk about it over a couple bowls

Kim: sure

Kim asked Kruse to call her. He secretly patched Cam in to eavesdrop on the call. As Kruse and Kim talked, Kruse and Cam IM’d each other, reveling as their fantasy came to life. “I’m gonig to rip her nose ring out and burn it,” Kruse typed. “BURN HER FLESH.”

“Y not keep her bound and alive,” Cam suggested.

“That’s what I’m going to do but I need to get her stoned first and possibly seduce her.”

“Lol, try quickly.”

Later that morning, Kim was still in bed when her mother kissed her good-bye before going to work, and told her she loved her. They had reason to be happy. The day before, Kim had found out she had enough credits to graduate from high school, and she was looking forward to hopefully volunteering at the local wild-animal-rehabilitation center, Wild arc.

That day, Kim didn’t have classes, so her mother figured she’d sleep in. The plan was for her to babysit in the afternoon, then come home to start sewing her graduation dress. But Kim had one last thing to resolve first. After her mother had gone, she slipped on her black hoodie with the number 13 on the front, and headed for the Langford bus exchange.

Around 10:30 a.m., Kim got off at the exchange, where Kruse and Cam met her. Cam had just finished buying the camp fuel that the boys would later use to set Kim’s body on fire. The three of them chatted for a bit, and then went down to the small brown house on Happy Valley Road with a strand of lights strung along the trim.

In the early hours of that morning, Kruse had told Cam he’d use a code phrase—“I think I’m going to make some KD”—a Canadian abbreviation for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner—when he was ready to attack. Shortly after arriving at the house, the boys struck, kicking and hitting Kim as they bound her hands and ankles. Kruse stuffed a sock in Kim’s mouth, which he then wrapped in duct tape. The two raped and beat Kim for hours until she died from suffocation. They mutilated her with a knife and stuffed refuse, including a four-inch-long lollipop stick, into her vagina and anus. They moved her body to a freezer in Kruse’s garage.

At some point, possibly while Kim was still alive, Kruse sat at his computer and sent her one last instant message—his alibi, he thought—asking her if she was done babysitting yet. Inevitably, other messages popped up when Kruse’s handle appeared online. A friend IM’d him that he suspected his father had been drinking rubbing alcohol. The friend wanted Kruse’s advice but grew frustrated when Kruse didn’t reply. “Dude,” he typed, “speeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak.”

Eight minutes later Kruse replied. “Sorry,” he wrote, “the freezer was jumping around.” Later that evening, Cam texted an ex-girlfriend, encouraging her to sneak out of her house and join him at Kruse’s. She didn’t come, though.

The next morning, Kruse and Cam put Kim’s body into a hockey bag and boarded a bus for the Galloping Goose Trail. Once there, they trudged into the woods and under a bridge. They doused the bag in fuel and lit it on fire. At some point while they were there, Kruse got out his phone and sent a text.

Prior to this, Kruse hadn’t tried hard to cover his tracks. But, as he later told the girl from Halifax, sending that text from under the bridge might have been a crucial mistake. He wondered if the police could trace his text to his phone at this spot. What if his digital trail led them to Galloping Goose?

:’(:’(:’(:’( OMFG I AM SO UPSET YM BESTFRIEND IS MISSING KIM IF U SEE THIS PLZZZZZZ EMAIL ME TELLING ME THAT YOUR OK I WILL NEVER STOP BEING FRIENDS WITH YOU KIM I MISS U PLZZ EMAIL ME TO TELL ME THTA UR OK!!!!!!:”(:’(:’’’’’’:’( KIMMY I MISS YOU AND I LOVE U !!!!!!!!

Samantha Kennedy, Kim’s friend, posted this message on her Facebook page not long after Lucy Proctor reported Kim missing. Kim's mother had suspected trouble the moment she called her on Thursday afternoon and was diverted straight to voicemail. “Because the phone was turned off I knew that something was wrong,” she told the police.

As the family, friends, and police mounted a search for Kim, Cam and Kruse went on with their lives. After dumping Kim’s body, Kruse spent the rest of the day at home with a girl he had been dating. Cam had brunch with his grandmother and mother, who took him to buy a video game afterward.

That night, around seven p.m., a young male who had been smoking pot with his friends under the Galloping Goose bridge stumbled across charred human remains. Dental records soon confirmed that the body was Kim’s. The Vancouver Island Major Crime Unit and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dispatched an investigative team of more than 40 officers on the murder case.

For cases involving teens, the online world is “more valuable than ever,” says Corporal Darren Lagan, spokesperson for the British Columbia Island District R.C.M.P. “People tend to be freer online, especially young people—they don’t feel any repercussions or anyone watching. It’s like when we used to try to get a booth in a coffee shop next to a person we were surveilling. We don’t have to do that anymore.”

Investigators kept close watch as Kim’s friends and family took to Facebook, including setting up a public memorial page in her honor. Visitors began trading clues and theories about who might have killed her. Investigators closely monitored this page, culling potential witnesses there as well as on other publicly available Facebook pages—none of which necessitated a warrant. (“You’d be amazed at how many people don’t have a single privacy [setting] on there,” Lagan said.)

With Kim’s death consuming the town and the local news, Kruse became increasingly paranoid about leaving any more evidence online. But he couldn’t resist the urge to share his story with someone he trusted. He was afraid of using MSN, but he thought the chat logs in World of Warcraft were less likely to be saved. On March 23, five days after Kim’s murder, he told his gamer girlfriend in Halifax on MSN that he had something urgent to tell her, but that he wanted to do it over World of Warcraft chat instead. Once inside World of Warcraft, he confessed to the crime. Back on MSN, he sent her links to the news reports as backup. The girl was shocked, but she eventually replied in the way he no doubt expected. “I’ll always be here, no matter what you do,” she wrote.

“That’s why I told you,” Kruse said. “No matter how things turn out I’ll make it up to you somehow, oneday.”

According to what the Halifax girlfriend told police, Cam came onto World of Warcraft chat, confirming Kruse’s account.

“What about her family and her friends and all whose lives you have ruined?” the girl asked Cam.

“No, I don’t feel bad for them,” he replied.

“Just don’t ever again. . . . ,” she wrote to Kruse back on MSN.

“I promise,” Kruse replied. “I have no desire to.” Then, in a sudden shift of focus, he told her he felt like playing a video game for old time’s sake. “I think I’m going to paly pokemon again,” he said. “I’ve had pokemon nostalgia for months.”

Kruse continued to show up sporadically at school—but he couldn’t contain his rage for long. When Samantha overheard Kruse talking about Kim, she asked him to stop because it was too painful. “She was my best friend,” she said. Suddenly, Kruse stood up and started screaming. “No one fucking cares,” he said. “She’s dead. Who gives a shit?” Another student had a similar encounter with Kruse. “I’m glad she’s dead,” he reportedly told the boy. “I hated her.”

Cam and Kruse frequently talked on MSN chat about the ongoing investigation. “Since we killed that bitch and it wasnt to hard we should do it again!” Cam wrote to Kruse on March 25.

Kruse and Cam were brought in for questioning, and the boys admitted to seeing Kim that morning but claimed she left them early to go to school. When a cop asked Kruse what type of person would commit such an act, Kruse said, “Someone who thinks it’s worth it to kill someone, or someone who’s in a fit of rage.”

Soon, police had enough evidence to secure the necessary judicial authorization to monitor and analyze Kruse’s and Cam’s online activities. Keeping Kruse and Cam under close surveillance, the police bugged their homes, their cell phones, and even the gazebo where they hung out in the park. Through forensic analysis of the boys’ computers and cell phones, they dug up their Google and Wikipedia searches, as well as old transcripts of texts and instant messages. In total, the Tech Crimes Unit amassed the equivalent of 1.4 billion sheets of paper on the two.

On Friday, June 18, Kruse and Cam were arrested for Kim’s murder. “They were both extremely calm and somber,” Lagan recalls. Rather than face a trial and jury, the two pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and indignity to human remains and were sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 10 years.

Parents used to be afraid of kids, building bombs in their basements. But today’s teenagers have found a more clandestine spot: a digital basement. “We spend so much time cautioning against strangers online,” Corporal Lagan told me, “but these are people she knew.”

On a drizzly late-spring morning, a little over a year since the murder, I sat with Kim’s family in a crowded, wood-paneled courtroom in Victoria for Cam and Kruse’s placement hearing. The judge was about to determine whether the boys should be transferred to adult penitentiaries.

The psychology reports were damning, suggesting a high probability of recidivism. Kruse was found to be a sexual sadist of the rarest kind, especially for someone so young—a twisted kid who, against enormous odds, found understanding in another disturbed boy.

Kim’s parents would prefer to see the boys die for their crime, but there is no death penalty in Canada. “Like when an animal is sick, you put them down,” Lucy Proctor told me. “They’re not even animals. I don’t like to use that [word] because Kim was a huge animal person. These two are monsters.”

Cam was led into the courtroom first. He wore a white shirt and black pants and had let his sideburns thicken to his jawline. Shackles rattled around his ankles. Since being incarcerated, he had remained isolated and despondent, plagued by nightmares of the crime. He had been trying to erase the memories. “He says his brain is like a computer’s recycling bin,” it was noted in a pre-sentence report. “The information has been processed and then it’s gone.” As he loomed in his box behind bulletproof glass, his defense attorney idly chatted with him about the N.H.L. play-offs.

Kruse followed, also in chains. He was dressed in an ill-fitting gray suit and tie. He wore an owlish pair of glasses, and his hair fell in a bowl cut around his ears. “That’s the one the cops call Harry Potter,” Kim’s grandfather Bob Proctor whispered to me, as the boy took his place before the judge.

The hearing was swift. Both boys would be transferred to adult, facilities where, the prosecutor pointed out, a more comprehensive sexual-offender-treatment program is offered, including chemical castration (a controversial drug-treatment plan used in Canada to reduce the likelihood of recidivism in sex crimes).

Langford residents remain shaken that such killers could somehow grow up in such a small community and go unnoticed. Pacific Secondary School, which Kim and her killers attended, has introduced a violence-threat protocol in the wake of the crime. This allows the police, the school, and social-service agencies to share information on students who are perceived as a threat “so we don’t end up with something tragic,” superintendent Jim Cambridge told me.

Though months had passed since Kim’s death, her friends were still struggling to recover when I met with them at a Starbucks in town. Samantha Kennedy wore a white T-shirt, on which she had scrawled a confessional: “Loss of Family and Friends.” It was an idea that she’d gotten from the television show Glee. Melissa Hajdu nervously chewed her lip. “I haven’t laughed the same since Kim died,” she said.

They had been searching their memories for hints of the horror to come. And they weren’t alone. At least four girls have come forward to a school official to tell of “rough, fast sex, bondage, and verbally abusive comments following sex” perpetrated by Cam, as well as, in one case, date rape, in the months leading up to Kim’s murder.

Melissa remains convinced that the text breakup from Kim sent Kruse over the edge. “Obviously it was the reason he started plotting against her,” she told me. Eventually she fell silent, gazing at her cell phone on the table. “My phone used to buzz all the time,” she said. “I’m always looking to see if I get a text from Kim.”